Attorney Celestine Dotson Defends Minor Accused of Murder

Criminal defense attorney Celestine Dotson, founder of the Law Office of Celestine Dotson, recently won a motion to suppress (Case No. 15-CF-1880 filed in the Circuit Court for the Third Judicial Circuit, Madison County, IL) for a defendant that was charged with murder. The accused was 16 years old when he first got charged with this murder, and it was found that his confession was wrongly obtained. Dotson filed a motion to suppress to have the wrongly obtained confession taken out of the case.

Court documents state the accused, on the night of the incident, was pulled from his bed as a suspect because the murder happened in the vicinity of his home, which is a subsidized housing project. The defendant didn’t have a criminal record, and allegedly there was no evidence linking him to the incident.

According to court documents, the defendant, during his second and third interviews about the incident, clearly and unequivocally asserted his right to remain silent by stating “I don’t want to talk no more” and “I don’t wanna talk no more because I don’t know,” respectively, which must be scrupulously honored. For that reason, court documents further state, that portion of his second and third interviews is suppressed and the State will not be permitted to use any of the suppressed portions during its case-in-chief.

The court also found that the detectives created a coercive environment which ultimately overcame the will of the defendant, and repeated violations of his Miranda rights ultimately resulted in a coerced confession at the end of interview three. Court documents further allege the detectives did this by threatening the arrest of the defendant’s younger brother, unless…